Work and Care of Women. The Case of Two “Manifatture” (Factories): The San Michele a Ripa Factory and the Italian Tobacco Factory

Abstract

This paper is part of the history of gender economics, adopted a microeconomic approach to study household economic decisions, labor, extended by the new discipline of gender economics in order to study gender differences and their economic implications, especially in the labor market. The present contribution intends to examine how the gender difference and the wage difference were present in the modern age and, in this regard, we want to deepen an emblematic case in the heart of Italy, that of the eighteenth-century Manufacture of San Michele a Ripa Grande and that of the nineteenth-century Italian Tobacco Factory. The two case studies have been identified because, even if in different periods, they represent for the Roman case, two important examples for the work of women in industry, because they represented, in the long term, the two most important manufactures and industries in Rome (which compared to the European capitals has never been an important industrial center). The sources used were found in the State Archives of Rome and little-used economic sources were also used, as well as the sources used for the Tobacco Factory found in the library of the Ministry of Finance are original.

Keywords

• women work
• wages
• 18th century
• 19th century
• gender gap